Shepherd Brooks, 92; made philanthropy his avocation
With ancestors such as Peter Chardon Brooks, who by most accounts became Boston's first millionaire some 200 years ago, Shepherd Brooks was a blue blood of the deepest hue.
You wouldn't have guessed it if you saw him tooling around Cambridge in an inexpensive car that never really accommodated his frame. Born with a resonant Boston Brahmin name, Mr. Brooks preferred Sheppie.
``As much as that was his background, that wasn't who he was," said a granddaughter, Melina Martin Peffall of Blue Bell, Pa.
``He was so nonpretentious," said Lori Lambert, a friend who helped Mr. Brooks and his late wife, Esmee, continue to live at home through their final years. ``Sheppie was over 6 feet tall. He drove a
Lawyer, Army officer, college dean, and presidential appointee, Mr. Brooks was at ease in a variety of roles. Philanthropist was his favorite, though. He and his family were no strangers to grand gifts -- his mother donated the property in Western Massachusetts that became Tanglewood. But Mr. Brooks preferred those occasions when he could assist an individual with little fanfare.
``He just had this whole hidden life of giving and philanthropy -- he was just utterly, utterly amazing in that way," Lambert said. ``Anybody in need he would help, no matter what the cost. He never talked about money or what he gave to people -- even to his bankers. I don't think he claimed much of it as deductions. He just gave. And gave and gave."
Mr. Brooks, whose health had been slowing failing, died at his Cambridge home July 17. He was 92.
``It sounds a little cliché, but he was an old-style gentleman," said a nephew, Anthony of Watertown. ``When you went into his house, he greeted you with a smile, he offered you a drink. He was always interested in what you were doing."
``He was a gentleman in both senses of the word -- a gentle man and a gentleman," said a niece, Diana Cherot of Needham.
Mr. Brooks grew up in Boston, first across from Boston Common on Beacon Street, then a few blocks away, near the Public Garden. Among his early memories was watching from a balcony as the parade celebrating the end of World War I passed by.
As a child, he spent parts of some summers in Medford at the estate of his namesake grandfather and in Lenox on property owned by his mother's family. His mother, Rosamond Sturgis Brooks, and cousin Mary Aspinwall Tappan donated the property to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which established its Tanglewood summer home there.
Mr. Brooks graduated from Groton School, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School, and attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was a lawyer in Chicago and married Esmee de Menocal in 1940.
During World War II he served in the South Pacific and left the Army several years later as a major, his family said. He was briefly an editor at a newspaper in New York's Hudson River Valley, then in 1950 became European director of The Salzburg Seminar in Austria, a nongovernmental organization that brings together people from different countries and cultures in an educational setting.
``He was always very interested in world events and being informed and issues of global justice," his nephew said. ``And he was a sort of dyed-in-the-wool liberal who was very concerned with American liberalism."
That political bent ranged from once giving Eleanor Roosevelt a ride to an event, his granddaughter said, to hosting Jane Fonda and others at his Cambridge home during the anti-Vietnam War era.
After Mr. Brooks returned to the United States in the early 1950s, he was appointed dean of university development during the nascent years of Brandeis University. He left when he was tapped by the Kennedy administration to help establish the Indian Institute of Technology in India. For the next 10 years, until the early 1970s, he traveled from Cambridge to India and other countries, working on educational initiatives.
By then, Mr. Brooks and his wife had a son and a daughter and were living in the house on Berkeley Street. His wife, who shared his devotion to charitable works, volunteered for years at the Pine Street Inn and worked with the mentally ill. She died in 1997.
A few years ago, he learned that Polly Thayer, a Boston artist, had painted his wife's portrait. He acquired the painting, which still hangs above his living room mantel.
When Mr. Brooks stopped working abroad, he opened an office in Harvard Square, practicing law infrequently. ``As time went on he was more of -- how shall you say? -- an at-home intellectual," said Dr. Curtis Prout, who formerly was a brother-in-law.
A quiet man, ``he didn't waste words," said his daughter, Angelica Martin of North Waterborough, Maine. ``When he spoke, people listened, but he always spoke in a quiet tone."
``He always talked with his head cocked a little to one side with a slight smile when he was putting across a point," Prout said.
Until he was into his late 80s, Mr. Brooks would walk for miles each day, his granddaughter said, and was an avid reader who pored through ``The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, and then books and books and books."
And he always inclined his intellect toward world events, reading The
The Friday evening before Mr. Brooks died, Lambert sat next to him in the moments before slipped into his final sleep.
``He kissed my hand as he was dying," Lambert recalled, ``and he said, `I love you,' and I said: `Sheppie, I love you, too. How many people have a 92-year-old as a best friend?' He smiled and said, `Not many.' "
In addition to his daughter, granddaughter, nephew, and niece, Mr. Brooks leaves a son, Charles of North Pownell, Vt.; two sisters, Daphne Prout of Dover and Violet McCandlish of Washington , D.C. ; and another granddaughter and grandson.
A memorial service will be held today at 1 p.m. in First Church in Cambridge, Congregational.
